Why It Might Be In The US's Best Interests To Grant Ed Snowden Full Immunity From Prosecution

from the not-exactly-win-win,-but-close dept

The administration wants Snowden back badly enough that it has let this singular aspect cloud its judgement. Obama recently stated he won't be meeting with Putin, stating Russia's harboring of Snowden as a factor (rather than Russia's multiple issues with human rights). Rather than engage in the debate Obama claimed he "welcomed," the administration is circling the wagons, as evidenced in the petty statement it issued in reference to Rep. Justin Amash's NSA-defunding amendment. Don't govern angry, as they say.

There are plenty of people who believe Snowden is a hero. Many others believe the opposite. The problem is the middle ground is pretty much nonexistent. Allowing Snowden to go free would appease the former, but allow him to continue exposing the NSA's surveillance programs. Locking him up wouldn't do much either, other than allow the government to avenge its embarrassment. It won't stop the leaks, however, at least not if Snowden's "dead man's switch" works as intended. The Guardian is already in possession of thousands of documents. Capturing Snowden will only hasten their release.

Over at the National Review (of all places), Robert Zubrin has a suggestion that might satisfy many on both sides of the issue. (H/T to Reason.)

The United States should give former NSA contractor Edward Snowden immunity from prosecution in exchange for congressional testimony.

It's an interesting angle. Although Zubrin declares that Snowden "certainly violated the law and may have committed treason," there's something to his suggestion. It's certainly preferable to what the US is currently offering Snowden: indefinite detention preceding a trial, which will then most likely be followed by even more detention.

It may not completely satisfy those who wish to see him punished, but it has to be a better scenario than letting him reside in Russia indefinitely, a country whose motives are rarely pure. On top of that, the US can't be holding out much hope the Russians will just decide to turn him over, and the administration simply doesn't have anything to use as leverage.

Pleading, whining, screaming, or demanding that Russia extradite him is simply absurd. Russia never has extradited any defector, and never will, because if it ever did, that would be the last defector it would ever get.

So, as Zubrin points out, exchanging immunity for thorough questioning seems like the best scenario for the US. If nothing else, it will serve to cut through the defensive rhetoric the NSA has deployed and, if Snowden's portrayal of what's happening isn't entirely accurate, that will be exposed as well.

Snowden and NSA leaders should be brought together face-to-face for questioning in public by a congressional investigatory committee, with both parties allowed to make their points and to counter the assertions of the other. If Snowden is lying, it will come out. If the NSA is lying, it will come out. If either refuses to appear, that party will be discredited.

Now, while the idea has its merits and would allow Snowden to return to America without facing a lengthy prison sentence, it's not without its potential drawbacks. (And this is assuming the administration would ever agree to this compromise, which is highly doubtful.)

First off, if the administration would offer this compromise, there is no question that it would demand an immediate halt to the leaks. This works in the government's favor, by both preventing any further exposure of the NSA's programs, as well as limiting discussion to what's been leaked previously -- much of which has already been discussed somewhat openly (if rather opaquely and "least untruthfully"). Using this as the baseline, the government could easily steer the discussion to well-traveled areas, allowing it to keep other malfeasance under wraps.

Second, this discussion will be going on behind closed doors. Access to the Manning trial was strictly controlled. It took a huge amount of effort just to get a transcriptionist into the press gallery. The access here would be even more limited thanks to the subject matter, which will be designated as "classified," even if the subject matter is all over the internet. So, the chances of the public receiving any benefit or new knowledge is rather low.

Finally, this scenario, despite being more balanced than the government's current offering, still favors those who wish to see Snowden prevented from leaking any more documents (or at least, giving the go-ahead from Russia -- the documents are already "leaked"). This would halt any further "damage" and put Snowden in a "his word against theirs" situation that can easily be spun by representatives of the intelligence community.

The government has the luxury, thanks to the programs being classified, of not having to prove any of Snowden's testimony conclusively false. All it has to do is magnify every misstep by Snowden and make loud noises about "exceptionally grave damage to national security" when it's the NSA's turn to answer his allegations.

Ultimately though, all of this discussion ignores the fact that there's a human being in the center of all of this, one that may be willing to make concessions in order to return to his homeland, or go the other way and refuse similar deals on principle. Whatever is most advantageous for both sides of the debate will likely rarely align with what Snowden feels is best for him. Still, the possibility of taking on his former employer and STILL being able to walk free might be very tempting.

Filed Under: asylum, ed snowden, immunity, russia, us

NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Spy On Everyone

from the but-of-course dept

This will come as no surprise to anyone, but NSA boss General Keith Alexander is pestering Congress for a new law which would provide blanket immunity for companies helping the NSA collect data on everyone.

Gen. Keith Alexander has petitioned Capitol Hill for months to give Internet service providers and other firms new cover from lawsuits when they rely on government data to thwart emerging cyberthreats.

Basically, he's arguing that if the NSA orders companies to do something illegal, the companies shouldn't be liable for that. There's some logic behind that, because when you get an order from the government, you often feel compelled to obey. But, of course, the reality is that this will give blanket cover for companies voluntarily violating all sorts of privacy laws in giving the NSA data. And, theoretically you could then sue the government over those violations, but we've seen in the past how well that goes over. First, the courts won't give you "standing" if you can't prove absolutely that your data was included. Then, if you get past that hurdle, the government will claim "national security" or sovereign immunity to try to get out of the case. And, even if it gets past all of that, and you win against the government, the feds shrug their shoulders and say "now what are you going to do?"

And, of course, rather than narrowly target this immunity, it appears that Alexander would like it as broad as possible.

One former White House aide told POLITICO that Alexander has been asking members of Congress for some time to adopt bill language on countermeasures that’s “as ill-defined as possible” — with the goal of giving the Pentagon great flexibility in taking action alongside Internet providers. Telecom companies, the former aide said, also have been asking Alexander for those very legal protections.

Given the revelations of the past few weeks, this seems like the exact wrong direction for Congress to be heading. We should want companies to push back against overaggressive demands from the government for information. Giving them blanket immunity would be a huge mistake and only enable greater privacy violations.

Filed Under: blanket immunity, immunity, keith alexander, nsa, nsa surveillance, spying, tech companies

DailyDirt: The Progress Of Treating HIV

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The US Center for Disease Control reported on its first case of AIDS (though it wasn't called AIDS at the time) in 1981. Some HIV-positive patients have since gained access to anti-viral drugs that hold off the fatal complications for many more years than it was previously thought possible. There are over 34 million people in the world who are HIV-positive, and there are some optimistic reports that the treatments are becoming more effective. Here are just a few fascinating stories on the development of HIV treatments.

• A baby born in Mississippi with HIV has been "functionally cured" after receiving an aggressive regimen of anti-retroviral drugs.. a discovery that occurred when the treatment was inadvertently stopped after 18 months. There have been some scattered reports of other babies who have been cleared of HIV, but this is the first case that will be rigorously studied with highly sensitive genetic tests. [url]
• A generation of HIV-positive youngsters are beginning to live into adulthood, but the long-term effects of HIV (and the medicines to treat it) are completely unexplored territory. Studying these kids for many decades could determine optimal medical regimes and shape how society handles patients who need indefinite treatment. [url]
• The "Berlin Patient" (aka Timothy Ray Brown) is the first known person to defeat HIV. After a bone marrow transplant to treat (unrelated) leukemia, Brown recovered, and doctors found that his HIV levels were at undetectable amounts.. and remained so without anti-viral drugs. [url]
• Some people have a genetic mutation that prevents HIV from infecting their white blood cells, making them immune to the virus. The specific mutation was identified in 1996, but the discovery hasn't (yet) lead to a universal vaccine. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aids, berlin patient, cure, disease, health, hiv, immunity, medicine, treatment

Big Telcos Love CISPA; More Immunity For Violating Our Customers Privacy?!? Sign Us Up!

from the of-course-they-like-it dept

It's well known that the big telcos and the federal government have an all-too-cozy relationship when it comes to handing over data on telco customers. This has included ignoring all the rules and going so far as handing over information based on a post-it note given to them by the FBI. The telcos general standpoint has been that they're happy to let the government reach deep into their data -- more or less adding a direct tap on all of us. Congress, however, gift-wrapped them immunity to any lawsuits from all of that kind of stuff. Still, these days, the telcos sure do like not being liable for coughing up their customer's private info to the government, so it should come as little surprise that they're practically shoving each other aside to support CISPA.

Two major trade groups, CTIA and US Telecom, each issued short statements saying that CISPA is a good thing. US Telecom claimed that the bill would make it more efficient to detect, deter and respond to cyberthreats. That would be nice if true, but no one's yet explained how that actually would work in practice. CTIA knows how to play the press, and started its press release by hyping up recent hack attacks. That CISPA likely would have done absolutely nothing to stop those attacks is conveniently ignored.

Meanwhile AT&T and Verizon each offered their own support for the bill, making it clear that protection from liability is the most important thing to them.

The telcos, of course, have nothing to lose and everything to gain from CISPA. It gives them even more freedom from liability in sharing your info, but doesn't present any specific regulatory burdens on them. Of course, shouldn't we be a lot more concerned about the views of the people whose privacy would be violated, than the views of those violating their privacy?

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, immunity, information sharing, privacy, telcos
Companies: at&t, ctia, ustelecom, verizon

Appeals Court Holds Firm: The Government Cannot Be Sued For Violating Its Own Wiretapping Laws

from the US-Government-issues-blank-check-for-4th-Amendment-violators dept

There's more bad news on the Fourth Amendment front as the appeals court reviewing a lawsuit filed against the US government for illegally spying on American citizens has declined to rehear the Al-Haramain case.

A federal appeals court is refusing to reconsider its August ruling in which it said the federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued.

The original decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this summer reversed the first and only case that successfully challenged President George W. Bush’s once-secret Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Without comment, the San Francisco-based appeals court announced Wednesday that it would not rehear (.pdf) the case again with a larger panel of 11 judges, effectively setting the stage for a Supreme Court showdown. The appeals court Wednesday also made some minor amendments (.pdf) to its August ruling, but the thrust of it was the same as before.

Not only does this mean the plaintiffs will have to take the case to the Supreme Court (if it will hear the case), but it also means the damages awarded ($20,000 each for the two plaintiffs and $2.5 million in legal fees) have been reversed.

This also means the Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Plan will continue unchecked as citizens will be unable to bring suits against the government for warrantless spying. The decision rests on a couple of dubious items: a "missing" sovereign immunity waiver and a document mistakenly sent to the plaintiffs that was later designated a "state secret."

The San Francisco-based appeals court had ruled that when Congress wrote the law regulating eavesdropping on Americans and spies, it never waived sovereign immunity in the section prohibiting targeting Americans without warrants. That means Congress did not allow for aggrieved Americans to sue the government, even if their constitutional rights were violated by the United States breaching its own wiretapping laws...

A lower court judge found in 2010 that two American lawyers’ telephone conversations with their clients in Saudi Arabia were siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. The allegations were initially based on a classified document the government accidentally mailed to the former al-Haramain Islamic Foundation lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor.

The document was later declared a state secret, removed from the long-running lawsuit and has never been made public.

Concern about the government's ability to designate nearly anything as a "state secret" in order to prevent the release or use of possibly damning evidence has already been discussed by the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the Clapper v. Amnesty International case. In this case, the belated "state secret" designation effectively limited the plaintiffs to citing circumstantial evidence, which is far less effective than producing an actual document showing that the NSA was doing exactly what the plaintiffs claimed it was.

Between the "sovereign immunity" that is unlikely to ever be waived and the ability to designate damning evidence post-facto as "state secrets," the NSA has set itself up with the ability to run a constitutionally dubious, but legally sound, domestic spying program. The system of checks and balances our nation was formed on now more closely resembles a series of erected walls protecting government agencies from being held accountable for their actions.

Filed Under: immunity, privacy, wiretapping

Supreme Court Won't Hear Case On Legality Of Retroactive Immunity For Telcos

from the another-brick-in-the-wall dept

Well, this is unfortunate. Late last year, the 9th Circuit appeals court -- as part of a series of cases concerning warrantless spying on Americans -- decided that the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) passed by Congress in 2008 was not unconstitutional in granting telcos retroactive immunity for carrying out government orders to spy on Americans. This is quite troubling for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the government is more or less admitting that it teamed up with telcos to violate the law. Why else would you grant retroactive immunity to telcos if you didn't know they'd already broken the law in the past.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Supreme Court has now refused to hear the appeal on the case, effectively killing off the EFF and ACLU's legal challenge to the legality of giving telcos retroactive immunity.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, immunity, retroactive immunity, supreme court, telcos, warrantless wiretaps

Retroactive Immunity From The Gov't For Warrantless Wiretapping Deemed Constitutional

from the and-then-what? dept

As you hopefully recall, a few years back, the press revealed that the Bush Administration had begun a rather sweeping wiretapping campaign, working with major telcos to get access to all sorts of phone and internet communications... without a warrant. That revelation resulted in a bunch of lawsuits against both the telcos and the government. In response, Congress quickly passed the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which included a provision granting retroactive immunity to the telcos who helped the government by passing along private info despite the lack of any warrant. Then Senator Obama originally opposed this provision, but changed his mind at the last minute... and has been an enthusiastic supporter of retroactive immunity since becoming President.

A series of 9th circuit appeals court rulings on various cases related to these issues all came out on Thursday. The big one, Hepting v. AT&T, was on the question of the Constitutionality of the retroactive immunity clause. While the specifics of the ruling focus on some tricky specific legal claims (and you have to wade through 26 pages listing all the parties to the case...), the basic summary: granting retroactive immunity is perfectly Constitutional, in large part because of the big scary bogeyman of "national security." For example, in the discussion of whether or not Congress had an "intelligible principle" in delegating authority concerning retroactive immunity under the Act to the Attorney General, the Court basically "national security" is good enough:

When considering how to respond to lawsuits like this one, the Committee "recogniz[ed] the importance of the private sector in assisting law enforcement and intelligence officials in critical criminal justice and national security activities." ... The Report further states that "electronic surveillance for law enforcement and intelligence purposes depends in great part on the cooperation of the private companies that operate the Nation's telecommunication system." ... The intelligible principle that comes through in the legislative history is one of protecting intelligence gathering and national security information.

The fact that § 802 arises within the realm of national security--a concern traditionally designated to the Executive as part of his Commander-in-Chief power--further suggests that the intelligible principle standard need not be overly rigid.

This strikes me as somewhat bizarre reasoning. Even if we recognize that the government has to rely on the private sector in intelligence gathering, that should never create immunity for illegal activities. The concerns that telcos would be afraid to help the government without immunity seems ridiculous. If the actions were legal then it would already have effective immunity, in that suits would be quickly dismissed. It's only if the actions are illegal that they would need immunity.

There are a number of other specific points in the ruling, but the other one that strikes me as ridiculous is the court's response to Hepting's claim that another problem with the Act is that it puts a biased party in charge of determining who gets immunity, and that's a due process violation. To put it simply, if it's the government's own Attorney General deciding to grant telcos immunity to coverup the government's own illegal wiretapping... then that's a due process violation in that the plaintiff has no way to get a fair hearing from a neutral or unbiased judge. Amazingly, the court rejects this in two ways. First, by saying that the Attorney General "certifying" the actions of telcos to qualify them for immunity does not count as "adjudicating," but is merely "factfinding." But if that "factfinding" blocks any chance of the case being heard, isn't that effectively the same as "adjudicating."

The second reason for rejecting this argument is that we just have to assume the Attorney General is unbiased, according to the court:

Hepting views Attorney General Mukasey as operating under "a structural, institutional bias" because he served during the Bush Administration, which advocated for the legislation, and was counsel to the United States in these lawsuits. He follows with the claim that Mukasey "had an actual bias in this matter," because he stated publicly that the immunity provision was "important" and that immunity represented "a fair and just result," and also conveyed this opinion to members of Congress.

Hepting ignores that the Attorney General has a legitimate policy role. It is well established that "[a]dministrators . . . may hold policy views on questions of law prior to participating in a proceeding." .... Public officials are presumed not to be biased; expressing an opinion, even a strong one, on legislation, does not disqualify an official from later responding to a congressional mandate incorporating that opinion.

Yeah, but that's not the issue. No one's saying that public officials can't make use of legislation they supported in general. But in this specific situation, the law allows the AG to very easily cover up illegal activities performed by companies to help his own investigations. That's the bias concern. No one cares that he supported the law. They're concerned that his bias is in covering up illegal actions that helped his own efforts.

The courts also rejected Hepting's argument that retroactive immunity precludes any legal action against the wiretapping, by noting that retroactive immunity only applies to the telcos -- but the government itself can still be liable. And that's where the second important ruling on this issue comes in. The ruling in Jewel v. NSA is at least slightly more encouraging, in that it sends a separate, but related case against the government for warrantless wiretapping back to the district court, rejecting many of its arguments that led it to dump that case earlier.

In that case, the district court dismissed the case, claiming that Jewel lacked the standing to sue the government. However, the appeals court disagrees and says that Jewel does have standing. It finds that Jewel showed "concrete and particularized injury." Of course, the district court may still turn around and dump the case, agreeing with the government's other key assertion that the "state secrets privilege" kills off the case. Of course, if that's what happens it kind of undermines the claim in the Hepting ruling that telco immunity is fine because you can still sue the government. Furthermore, even if the government loses here, it's not clear that it matters. As in the similar Al-Haramain case, if the government is found to have illegally wiretapped someone, so what? In Al-Haramin, the government just had to fork over about $40,000. That's hardly going to make the government stop...

There was a third ruling related to all of this as well, in McMurray v. Verizon, which more or less was the same thing as the Hepting case, but also added one separate argument: that the FISA Amendments Act represented a violation of the Takings Clause. The court keeps this one short, and says that while the idea is a "novel approach," it really just doesn't apply here, in large part because McMurray "failed to seek just compensation from the Court of Federal Claims," as required for a Takings Clause claim to be valid.

In the end, the Jewel ruling is nice, but may not get much further, and the acceptance of the Constitutionality of retroactive immunity is pretty horrifying. Obviously, this seems not just ripe for abuse, but pretty clearly a sign that there was past abuse that the government is happy to keep covering up.

Filed Under: constitution, immunity, legality, us government, warrantless wiretapping

How SOPA 2.0 Sneaks In A Really Dangerous Private Ability To Kill Any Website

from the scary dept

I already wrote a big post about yesterday's SOPA markup day one. While we're moving forward on day two, I wanted to call out one key point that was really made clear by an amendment offered by Rep. Jared Polis late in the day yesterday, which hasn't received nearly enough attention. As you may recall, with the "manager's amendment" version of SOPA (i.e., SOPA 2.0), the "notice-and-shut off funding" section of the private right of action in Section 103 was removed. This was good, because we've seen how the notice-and-takedown provision of the DMCA has been widely abused.

However, what most people missed was that the bill effectively sneaks this back into the bill in a much worse form in Section 105, which supposedly grants "immunity" to service providers for taking voluntary action to stop infringement. The true impact of this section was only made clear by Rep. Polis' attempt to limit it, as he highlighted how this broad immunity would likely lead to abuse. That's because this section says that anyone who takes voluntary action "based on credible evidence": basically gets full immunity. Think about what that means in practice. If someone sends a service provider a notice claiming infringement on the site under this bill, the first thing every lawyer will tell them is "quick, take voluntary action to cut them off, so you get immunity." Even worse, since this is just about immunity, there are no counternotice rules or anything requiring any process for those cut off to be able to have any redress whatsoever.

This is scary.

Rep. Polis, quite reasonably sought to limit this section to avoid such a situation. As he noted, anyone can send in a notice under this section, and the service provider is likely to take action to keep immunity. That's super wide open for abuse.

The debate on this point was downright painful. Some of the others on the Committee insisted that Polis' interpretation of the section was wrong. But it's not. Rep. Ted Deutsch kept misreading the law, pretending that because it talks about the "actions" in earlier sections (that you can take to get immunity), it means that the conditions for those actions must be the same (i.e., there needs to be a court order). But the law doesn't say that at all. Others insisted that there needed to be a court order to get the immunity as well.

Let's put this simply: that's ridiculous. And wrong. Very wrong. And anyone who can think for two damn seconds would know it's wrong. You don't need immunity for obeying a court order. Because if you get a court order, you pretty much have to obey (or end up in court). But more to the point, this whole section is about "voluntary actions". Obeying a court order is not a voluntary action. If this section were just about cases where there's a court order, then it wouldn't make any sense at all. It clearly applies to voluntary actions outside of a court order.

The response from SOPA defenders was painful in its cluelessness. Rep. Watt more or less admitted that he thought Polis' interpretation was wrong, so he wouldn't support the amendment. That makes no sense. If Watt thinks the language already says that, what's the harm of clarifying that with the text of the Polis amendment? It makes no sense to refuse to do so. And if Watt and Deutsch really believe that the meaning of 105 is clear and doesn't need any amendments to clarify, they might want to talk to some actual legal experts, because they're analyzing the bill and reading it to say exactly as Polis interpreted it. And since this is a private right in the bill, if lawyers are already interpreting it that way, that means it'll get used that way. So why not clarify? It's mind-boggling.

Perhaps even more ridiculous was Rep. Howard Berman, who, in trying to agree with Watt and Deutsch, made the exact opposite argument and actually agreed with Polis, while claiming he didn't and using that agreement as a reason to vote against the amendment! I'm not joking. Berman pointed out that, contrary to Deutsch and Watt's claims, it made no sense to have an immunity section that only dealt with court orders for all the reasons we listed above. Basically, while Deutsch and Watt pretend that the section requires a court order, Berman proves that it doesn't... and then says that's why he's voting against the amendment. It really was a head smashing moment.

In the end, despite vigorous attempts by Polis and Rep. Lofgren to explain why this was so problematic, the Committee basically just ignored the whole thing and rejected the amendment. End result: SOPA 2.0 contains a crazy scary clause that's going to make it crazy easy to cut off websites with no recourse whatsoever. And this part isn't just limited to payment providers/ad networks -- but to service providers, search engines and domain registrars/registries as well. Yes. Search engines. So you can send a notice to a search engine, and if they want to keep their immunity, they have to take the actions in either Section 102(c)(2) or 103(c)(2), which are basically all of the "cut 'em off, block 'em" remedies. That's crazy. This basically encourages search engines to disappear sites upon a single notice. It encourages domain registries to kill domains based on notices. With no recourse at all, because the providers have broad immunity.

It's this kind of insanity that should terrify people about this bill moving forward.

Filed Under: copyright, immunity, jared polis, private right of action, sopa

Feds Insist That As Long As They Break The Law In A 'Classified' Way, They Can Never Be Sued

from the please-explain-how-that-works dept

The EFF has been involved in a series of lawsuits against the government and telcos concerning the almost certainly illegal warrantless wiretapping program that the US has been using for many years, which was exposed by the NY Times and Wired a few years back. The US government more or less admitted what it was doing was entirely illegal when it passed new legislation that (a) tried to make the warrantless wiretapping legal and (b) granted telcos retroactive immunity from any lawsuits for helping the government. Because of these things -- along with the US's insistence that these lawsuits would reveal state secrets -- all of the lawsuits have been dismissed. However, the 9th Circuit appeals court is now considering restating them after an appeal via the EFF.

What's pretty stunning about the federal government's position is that it seems so farcical on its face. It seems to be claiming that (1) as long as the government breaks the law in a classified way, that can never be subject to litigation and (2) if lawsuits concerning illegal activity would be a burden on those who participated in the illegal activity, then such lawsuits should not be allowed. I'm not kidding. A couple of quotes:

“Congress made a considered decision that it would be unfair if [the telcos] were subject to potential suits and ruinous liability,” Kellogg said.

Department of Justice Attorney Thomas Bondy urged the panel of judges to abide by Congress’ wishes. He repeated over and again that litigating the allegations would expose national security secrets.

“Who was or who was not surveilled, that’s classified,” he said. “What any particular carrier did or did not do, that’s all classified.”

But combine those two things and you're basically saying the government has full impunity to do whatever the hell it wants and can never face any legal consequences. On top of that, those who help the government can never face legal consequences either. How does that possibly make sense? It appears that at least two of the judges on the three judge panel had significant concerns about this:

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wondered aloud, “If these plaintiff’s don’t have standing, who would?” Judge M. Margaret McKeown said the “concern” she had was that the suits’ dismissal “cuts off the plaintiffs … from ever pursuing a claim.”

But, those random musings aren't necessarily indicative of how the court will rule. I am hopeful they realize the plainly ridiculous state of the government simply being able to hide any illegal activity behind a claim that "it's classified," and will allow at least some of these cases to go forward.

Filed Under: classified, doj, immunity, legality, us government, warrantless wiretapping

Administration Succeeds In Delaying The Release Of Telco Lobbying On Immunity

from the transparency-is-good-in-theory... dept

So much for that new Obama administration "transparency" claim, huh? After three unsuccessful attempts at stalling a court order to release documents concerning who lobbied for telco immunity in warrantless wiretapping lawsuits, the administration has succeeded in its fourth attempt, delaying the release of the documents at least until next year. Of course, by the time this is decided, it should be long after Congress is done debating the whole warrantless wiretapping issue... so that's convenient. I'm still trying to figure out who or what the administration is trying to shield. It seems pretty obvious that the telcos would lobby for immunity, so that's not revealing much. So what's so important to keep secret?

Filed Under: immunity, obama administration, telcos, transparency, warrantless wiretapping